Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (14 page)

He was horribly thirsty by now. He took his time finding a stream running down from the higher ground. It had to be swift running and clear. Captain Corrain had taught him that, when neither of them dared risk the gut rot that saw men driven from the anchorage to die inside a handful of days if they were ashore or taken from their oar to be tossed to the sharks at once if they were aboard.

Sitting to cleanse his hands as best he could with the particular leaves which Imais had shown him were best for the purpose and then cupping the refreshing water to his mouth, Hosh wondered uneasily how the corsairs were faring on this side of the island. This was the furthest they could flee without a vessel to brave the waves. Surely they must have had sufficient water to drink with these streams running down to the shore.

But what had they had to eat? They must be starving now, raiders and slavers alike, standing shoulder to shoulder on the barren sands. Unless they’d started eating each other. The darkest rumours of Aldabreshin customs back in the Halferan barrack hall had hinted at such atrocities. Hosh’s own insistent hunger after his long morning’s exertions turned to hollow nausea.

He hugged his knees close, burying his face. He didn’t want to go on. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t go back and admit his cowardice. Were there any lies that he could tell that could possibly deceive a wizard? Miserably wiping his face, Hosh had to admit that was unlikely. He’d never been able to fool anyone, not once they’d seen their tenth solstice anyway.

He forced himself to his feet and crept reluctantly onwards. Now his fate surely depended, one way or the other, on who he encountered first.

As the gradual slope smoothed out towards the water, Hosh saw the first traces of the fleeing corsairs. Dead bodies sprawled amid nut palms stunted by the fierce winds blowing constantly along this shore. He buried his face in his sleeve to counter the worst of the stink, brutal even through his broken and snuffling nose. Abandoned cloud bread wasn’t the only thing rotting in this season.

He moved hastily upwind. The light through the trees brightened and he realised he was getting close to the rocky beaches. He’d only been over this way once before, when the oar slaves had been left to their own devices for days at a time over the winter, when storms made all but infrequent voyages to neighbouring domains too perilous.

As soon as he’d realised it could be done, Captain Corrain had insisted on making a complete circuit of the island. They had been forced to acknowledge that the old blind corsair Grewa had chosen this hideout well. No other island was visible from any point on the shore and they hadn’t seen a single ship even hull down on the far horizon. Not from some triangular-rigged fishing skiff to any great square-sailed galley with a triple bank of oars.

So what, Hosh wondered, were the corsairs hoping to find here? He peered up through the nut palms’ burgeoning crowns of leaves but could see no column of smoke from any signal fire. There must be fish to be caught, he supposed, but if there was any scent of cooking, it couldn’t penetrate the lingering stench of the dead.

He saw movement ahead. Hosh dropped to his hands and knees. His heart pounded. Remembering his magic arm ring did nothing to slow his panic. Then he realised the slowly moving figure was a woman. She was cradling something in one arm. As he watched, Hosh realised she was plucking leaves from the tips of a sprawling shrub’s branches and dropping them into a fold of cloth.

She was looking cautiously around, in all directions but most often towards the sea. Doubtless she feared being robbed of her foraging’s spoils. Or perhaps she feared the man with the sword shadowing her, for all that he was supposed to be protecting her. Hosh noticed the raider just in time to crouch behind a dense cluster of spiny-tipped leatherspears. Like the woman, the swordsman was most concerned with some threat from their seaward side.

Hosh didn’t recognise the woman or her guardian at all. But just perhaps if he followed them, he would find someone whom he knew?

As best he could judge, peering up through the trees, midday had come and gone before the unknown woman turned towards the shore, her shadow trailing after her. Hosh followed, his guts knotted with apprehension. Finally he followed her to a makeshift shelter of nut palm branches laid across the gap between two black and broken boulders.

Drianon, goddess of hearth and home, of women and wheat be blessed now and for ever more. Among the assorted slaves clustered close to the rocks, Hosh could see Imais using a roughly shaped wooden pestle to pound something into mush inside a basket woven from green palm fronds.

But how could he hope to approach her with a double handful of gaunt swordsmen prowling the edge of this crude encampment? Hosh found himself a fringe tree thicket to hide in and pondered that challenge as the first drops of rain began to fall.

Within a few breaths, the rain was coming down in cupfuls as was customary hereabouts. Hosh was soaked to the skin, something he’d also grown well used to. He watched the roaming swordsmen head back towards the black boulders. They didn’t need to use their blades to claim what little shelter the makeshift roof of palm branches offered. The slaves hastily yielded to sit out in the rain.

Hosh watched Imais walk to a nut palm where he’d already noted a patch of clean-swept earth at its base. She carefully nudged aside the few wind-blown leaves with a stick. She had been one of the first to warn Hosh of the Archipelago’s countless venomous spiders, insects and snakes.

Satisfied, she sat down and leaned back against the tree trunk, closing her eyes as the rain streamed through the tight dark curls dotting her scalp like peppercorns and on down her rounded coppery features. Though Hosh saw she wasn’t nearly as comfortably plump as she had been when she was living in the anchorage as the
Reef Eagle
’s pavilion’s cook.

He looked at the black rocks. The raider swordsmen were nowhere to be seen. The other slaves were sitting close by, heads hanging, heedless of anything beyond the rain hammering down on their heads.

Edging carefully along behind the fringe tree thicket, Hosh moved as close as he dared to Imais. He was much too far away to risk calling out though and she still had her eyes closed. He wrestled with a sappy twig until he managed to break off a short length.

He stripped off the leaves but for a few at the end. Would that help it fly like an arrow? Breathing a desperate prayer to Talagrin, god of hunters and wild places, Hosh hurled the stick at Imais.

It landed a little way short of her foot. But when she shifted her position, Hosh saw her toe catch the twig. He already had another ready. He threw it as hard as he could. Imais stiffened as it flopped onto the dark earth a handspan away from the first one.

Hosh could see her peering in his direction. He looked hastily towards the black rocks. There was no sign that anyone there had noticed. Desperately hoping the fringe thicket hid him from view, he rose from his painful crouch, waving a cautious hand.

Imais hid her face in her hands. Was that some signal? If so, Hosh had no notion what it might mean. Before he could worry about that, he saw Imais get to her feet. Unhurried, tugging at the drawstring as though to loosen her grimy trews, the woman walked towards the fringe trees.

Now Hosh understood. Hopefully anyone watching would assume she was going to find some hollow to piss in.

Imais had originally come from the Archipelago’s southernmost reaches, if Hosh had understood her markedly different dialect correctly. She had been born and sold anything up to a thousand leagues away, before being bought and sold again across more domains than he could comprehend. He didn’t know if she’d been slave-born or captured in some warlord’s raid or traded away by her own family in their desperation to save her from starvation or disease. Had she ever had children? Hosh had never dared to ask, for fear of learning that some dreadful fate had befallen a once-beloved son or daughter.

She rounded the thicket and halted, to stare at him in disbelief. ‘Both died, mouse and scorpion.’ Mystified, she shook her head. ‘But no sting to kill the mouse and with the canthira leaves still green.’

It took Hosh a moment to realise what she was talking about. The glass jar. It had repelled him, though he’d taken care not to show it.

With the Canthira Tree stars on the horizon, Imais had taken a spray of leaves from the earthly tree and put them in a jar with one of those deadly creatures, a scorpion, as well as a little mouse captured in the kitchen. As long as the mouse clung to the leaves in the top half of the jar, it could stay out of reach of the scorpion’s sting.

She had been looking for an omen, as she had done the time before, when she’d trapped a spray of vizail blossoms with the jar’s lid. That time the mouse had lived. Hosh didn’t understand why but Imais had said that the portent promised good fortune for him.

He didn’t want to know what she thought this second result of her cruelty might mean. He spoke before she could tell him.

‘The wizard, he wants to speak to someone. I need to find Nifai.’

‘His taint kills all.’ Imais spat on the ground.

Hosh knew from that gesture that she was talking about the wizard, not the overseer. Did she blame Anskal’s presence for whatever had gone wrong with her carefully prepared jar?

Hosh could think of any number of reasons why the mouse had died. Terror alone could have killed the poor little beast, trapped in a cloth-covered jar with a scorpion scuttling around the bottom.

‘I need to find Nifai,’ he repeated. ‘The wizard says he will let you go—there are terms,’ he added hastily as he saw desperate hope dawn in Imais’s dark eyes. ‘A bargain to be made.’ Surely the Aldabreshi would understand that?

Imais stared at him for a long moment. ‘Have you seen Grewa?’

The rain rattled the leaves all around them.

Hosh blinked water out of his eyes. ‘Grewa?’

The blind corsair who had previously ruled this nest of thieves? Surely the only question was whether he had been inside that pavilion, shattered when Anskal struck, or had he burned alive along with his crew and hapless oar slaves when magical fire consumed his trireme.

Hosh shook his head. ‘He’s dead.’

Imais shook her own head. ‘He was seen, after the mainlander came.’ She spat on the ground again. ‘His skiff was seen sailing away from its hiding place. He must have seen a portent.’

Hosh refused to believe any of this. ‘You say he was seen? You say he had a hidden boat. Did you see any of this yourself?’ He stepped forward, ready to seize her, to shake the truth from her.

Imais warned him off with upraised hands. ‘I only know what I hear. They say that Grewa will return to have his vengeance.’

‘Do you truly believe that? Have you seen any omens to tell you that’s true?’ Hosh demanded. ‘Wouldn’t you rather go now than wait and hope? He says he is ready to bargain.’

He remembered to spit on the ground as he gestured back towards the anchorage side of the island. Then he swept his hand towards this rocky, hungry shore.

‘What debt would these people owe you, if you helped them make a trade for their freedom?’

If they didn’t kill her first, for daring to suggest such a thing, Hosh thought with sudden terror.

‘Help me find Nifai. He can make the deal. He can risk the taint.’

Imais ran a hand over her sodden hair. Hosh could see rainwater trickling down the side of her neck.

‘I must think on this.’ She turned abruptly and hurried back to her chosen tree.

Hosh shrank back behind the fringe thicket. He dared not follow her and risk capture by those swordsmen.

But he dared not return empty-handed to Anskal. Not that Hosh had much idea what the wizard might do, if he thought he was being defied or betrayed. But he guessed there would be a lot more corsairs dead at the end of it. More than had already died in that obliterated pavilion and the trireme where Grewa had surely burned.

And he would die along with them as likely as not, and his poor beloved mother would never know how he died and his bones would lie and moulder into the dead leaves on this island, with Poldrion’s demons tormenting his shade till the last dissolution of his body in this world allowed him to finally cross Saedrin’s threshold.

Hosh sank to his knees and wondered by all that was holy, what was he supposed to do now? If only he had managed to escape with Captain Corrain. Tears stung his eyes and trickled down his face to mingle with the raindrops. If only he was safely back in Halferan.

C
HAPTER
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